LAHORE - After failing to run the terror network through the barrel of the gun, members of the outlawed TTP and their allies have launched a psychological warfare to incite the Pakhtoon population of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata and asked them to stand up against the ruling elite, especially of Punjabi origin and armed forces for usurping their rights, The Nation has learnt reliably.
Well-placed contacts close to the security services fighting terror war confided to The Nation on Thursday that audio compact discs (CDs) containing propaganda material inciting the Pakhtoon population of KP and Fata for rising against the ruling elite, especially of Punjabi origin and armed forces have been seized by state security services at Pak-Afghan border.
They informed that the audio CDs were seized by the intelligence agencies on a tip-off from their network of informers working on both sides of the Durand Line along with the carriers.
According to the contacts, the audio transcripts on the CDs inciting the Pakhtoon population said that the ruling elite including armed forces, especially of Punjabi origin were usurpers of rights of the Pakhtoons and they were doing it since long and the time had come for the proud people of Pakhtunkhwa to take their rights by force by rising against the Punjabi ruling elite.
The transcripts also provoked the Pakhtoons to eliminate those members of the Pakhtoon population who were siding with ruling elite.
It also said that the ruling elite and their partners were the agents of the West and wanted to impose a culture in the traditional conservative society, which was in complete conflict with ‘Pashtoonwali code’.
Officials of interior ministry when contacted, confirming the development said the defeated leadership of terrorists was making poor bids to make their foothold by employing the strategy of psychological warfare with the category of black propaganda which would not succeed.
Such efforts had not been successful during presence of the militants’ leadership in Fata and KP and it would certainly not work when they were hiding in Afghanistan.
The ministry contacts informed that such tactics had been employed by the anti-state elements in Balochistan by making staged videos and fake audio interviews of alleged state brute force against its own populace but it didn’t work there and similar tactics won’t success in the region of proud and patriotic people of KP.
A senior member of the security establishment told this correspondent that the propaganda or psychological warfare, which was launched by employing the media tools including social networks and spreading the staged videos and audios among the targeted population was the work of an arch rival of Pakistan.
The arch rival’s intelligence agency’s psychological warfare section was aiding and abetting the members of terror network residing in Afghanistan as they (terror network members) didn’t have the capacity to even conceive such ideas.